Maybe it should have been “The 10,000 Best…”

I’m so happy I get to combine two of my favorite things, complaining about the internet and the Golden Era* of The Simpsons. I’ve seen a few top-100 lists of quotes from The Simpsons floating around on websites that I don’t care to link to. (If you really want to check them out, Google them. Online lists drive me crazy (except for Cracked, I love Cracked, something about actually having substantial articles). Lists are lazy and the most popular thing ever. Probably because as easy as they are to make, they’re even easier to skim through.)

As a lover of The Simpsons, I found these lists irresistible. And then annoying. And then they motivated me to write a bitchy blog post about them. (Did I just call myself bitchy? These lists really have rubbed me the wrong way.) The problem is that pretty much anything that any characters said on The Simpsons, for a period, was worth quoting. The show was really that good. I’d know, I think about it at least once a day.

*A disputed time period to say the least. I tend to go with the broadest definition of the Golden Era, seasons 2 through 8. Which isn’t to say season 1 and 9 are terrible, they’re good. The show stays pretty good through around season 13 or 14. Season 9 includes “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson.” Season 10 includes the “Max Power” episode, “Homer to the Max.” Season 11 includes “Brother’s Little Helper” in which Mark McGwire guest stars to foreshadow what the NSA is doing now. Season 11 also includes “Grift of the Magi.” Season 12 includes of the most Homer-like plot reveals of all time in “Hungry, Hungry Homer” with “You know me: occasionally, I’ll be quirky. I’ll-be-quirky? ALBUQUERQUE!” Season 13 includes one of my favorite mini-episodes of all time, “Tales from the Public Domain,” where Bart plays Hamlet. I don’t watch the new episodes of the show at all, they just make me sad and uncomfortable.

October 16, 2003, 10-years ago today: one of the saddest days of my life. I remember it more vividly than any other trivially upsetting thing in my life. The Boston Red Sox blew game 7 of the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees.